Transcript

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>> The joint resolution is passed, without objection the motion to reconsider is laid on the table.

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Congress is putting Internet privacy up for sale to the highest bidder. The House of Representatives Tuesday voting to roll back Obama-era regulations which stopped broadband service providers like Verizon and Comcast from tracking your web activity and then selling the information to a third party without getting your permission first.

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Reuters' tech editor, Jonathan Weber.>> There were Federal Communications Commission rules and the aim is really to protect your privacy when you're browsing online. Your ISP is your Internet service provider. So everything that you do on the Internet kind of flows through those wires and so that provider can kind of see your browsing history, can see your email, can see all kinds of stuff that you're doing.

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>> And that's not all. Medical and financial information are not exempt. The ISPs have been lobbying Republicans ever since the rules were announced last year, arguing they should be able to do what the web's most popular sites and apps do. And it seems they've won the day.>> The beneficiaries are Verizon and Comcast and the big ISPs, the companies that most people get their Internet service from.

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And what they claimed was that this is just putting them on a level playing field with Google and Facebook and other companies that routinely collect this kind of information.>> Collecting it and selling it. But privacy experts point out, web users can choose which websites not to use based on privacy policies.

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That's not the case when it comes to Internet access. About 70% of US households only have one ISP. And these companies don't make it easy to opt out. User's data, when combined and sorted through in one place, can remove a level of anonymity without consent. President Trump is expected to sign the rule reversal into law which also prevents the FCC from putting such a ban in place ever again.